9 March 2011

Hey Guys,

Thanks for all of the emails, they were great! Sounds like you guys are staying really busy, which is great right? I am too, don´t worry. This last week was pretty good, but a little disappointing. We had three baptisms marked, and they all fell through Sunday morning, so that was a knife in the heart. But we went back over there on Monday and now we have 2 for this Sunday, the other guy we had ended up not wanting anything, just leading us on. Just like the dating world here, right? Lots of connections here. Stupid people. We told him, ``well you could have just told us you didn´t want to get baptized from the start. It´s a lot better than making us come over here Saturday morning to pick you up and find out that you ran away from us.`` So I think he learned his lesson. haha.

I was so happy to hear that you gave the missionaries more references and names than they could handle, that made me happy to hear that you guys are helping the missionaries out up there as well, as the members here in the Ward have been helping us out a ton as well. I will definitely help out the missionaries a lot more when I get home from the mission. I´m hoping that you will have a normal week as well, Mom. It´s a lot more fun though with all these crazy things happening, goes by a lot faster. Our two baptisms for this week are so cool. Two girls, one that is 13 and the other that is 8. They are really cool and always love when we come over there, their whole family gets excited to see us and when we leave they keep yelling, ``tchau!`` when we area walking down the street from their house until we lose sight of them, it´s hilarious. We go back and visit Rosângela, Amanda, Lucas and their family and they are a lot happier. It´s so great, they completely changed. It is really cool to see.

Last night, we had a really awesome lesson at Israel´s house with his mom and his sister Daiellen. I guess they added Megan and MaKensie on Facebook, that was pretty funny. They were telling me that they were talking to them and what they said back. Israel has a friend that he brought over, Esther, and we taught her last night. She seems really interested and I think that we can baptize her, but she won´t be able to go to church this week because she´ll be traveling. Bummer. They are a really good family, Israel has been helping us so much, he has been dying to find us someone to teach and he finally found this girl. It was awesome.

Holy cow, this week was pretty crazy though. The streets were so dead during the day. We had to leave at 9 in the morning to work and had to be home at 6. It was nuts. We´d leave our house and everyone was still asleep and we woke a bunch of people up clapping outside of their houses, a lot of people didn´t like that, as you can imagine. It was really slow and it´s been kind of tough to find new people because the streets are completely empty during the day. Besides the fact that it is Carnaval, it has been raining nonstop since last Monday. So that just adds to the fact that nobody is in the streets like normal.

This week already has started out a lot better. It´s weird having P-day on Wednesday, but it´s cool to switch things up a little haha. We´re here with Elder Fernandes and Elder Huntington, it´s been hilarious. Elder Fernandes was telling me about this funny crazy kid they left with to help him teach, Max, and they got to a house and they had a dog and Elder Fernandes told him, ``hang on Max, don´t go in there, they have a dog and he´ll bite you man.`` But he´s like, ``No, no, it´ll be fine.`` He sees the dog and he´s like, come here puppy. Wam!! He latches on to his hand and stops biting the heck out of him and Max is screaming like crazy! By this time I´m laughing my head off because of the voice that Fernandes was using to imitate him, it was so funny.

Elder Siqueira is a really cool guy, he´s 26 years old haha it´s pretty funny. He´s really chill and relaxed so it´s been really great. Elder Clegg went to Andaraí in Rio. Good luck to him, it´s so hot there haha. Hopefully he doesn´t get too fried there, he´s really white. And when I say white, I mean the whitest person I´ve ever seen in my life. Just like milk.

So do you guys have any news about Tanner or Ashton or McKay. Do you know if Dylan has left yet or what he is up to? Tell Kensie to talk to him and have him write me again, it´s been forever. That´s crazy that Tanner is finishing up his mission here in a few months.

Dad, I was talking about General Conference, because it´s coming up here in a few weeks. I can´t believe it is almost April already! And don´t worry, I didn´t forget about your Birthday on Friday! HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD! Hope it´s a great day for you! That´s cool that you found out more about my new President. Sounds like he´s a great guy as well! I´ll only have him for about 3 transfers, so it won´t be too long, but it will be good.

Well, hope that you all have a great week! Love you all! Try to send me some more pictures, alright?

-Love, Elder McDonald